Conquering Cat Messes With A DIY CAT Toy Box

Conquering Cat Messes With A DIY CAT Toy Box

There are three things I absolutely love about the holiday season: food, family, and decorations. There are three things I don’t love about the holiday season: cleaning, cat messes, and criticism.

If there’s a Christmas tree in the house, Spitfire is going to find a way to break one of the ornaments. Bandit will probably topple the tree over and Gracie will sit and watch. Giving in to his feline nature, Garfield will climb the tree and well, you know what happens next.

To save ourselves the frustration and hassle, my husband and I stick with a tabletop tree that the cats turn their noses up at. My mom thinks that if I taught my cats better manners that they wouldn’t dare mess with the Christmas tree. I try to explain to my mom that it’s in their nature to explore trees and she usually replies with something along the lines of, “well, if you didn’t have so many darn cats to begin with.” My mom has been telling me this most of my adult life because I’ve always had 2 or more cats. I don’t plan on changing this anytime soon.

Another point of contention between my mom and I is the mess that cats tend to make. She’s not a fan of litter boxes, hairballs, cat fur, or any of the three combined that tend to show up on household furniture or carpets. I’m with her on that one.

While I don’t mind cat hair on my furniture, I don’t want my furniture to look cat hair shaggy gross. I don’t want to see stains on the carpet from regurgitated hairballs and I certainly don’t want my carpets to look like a litter box.

Since I’m not getting rid of the cats, I clean a lot. Vacuuming is a constant in my household, but sometimes that’s not enough because there’s this nasty thing called pet stains.

Gross is right. I can hear my mom’s voice now, “Those darn cats are making a mess of your house.” While she may be correct to some extent, it can still sound criticism and I’ve never been a fan of criticism.

BISSELL 2X Pet Stain & Odor Remover gets rid of pet stains from your carpet and it has a patented odor control technology. It also contains Scotchgard. Yes, that Scotchgard.

The Pet Oxy Boost Carpet Cleaning Formula Enhancer is like bringing extra stain-fighting back-up. It’s designed to remove tough pet stains, guaranteed. All you have to do is add the enhancer to your BISSELL carpet cleaner tank {along with formula} and clean like you normally would. The oxygen in the enhancer zaps those tough pet stains and odors right out of your carpet.

Let’s see how it works…

Yes! The stains are gone. Gone! Let me tell you if I could send you the fresh scent of BISSELL Pet Oxy Boost Carpet Cleaning Formula Enhancer through the screen, I would. It made the whole house smell clean and fresh and not heavily perfumed like other solutions I’ve tried.

It took me less than an hour to remove pet stains and dirt from my carpet because the new BISSELL ProHeat 2X Revolution has an Express Clean mode. The lightweight and maneuverable body were easy to use and it had my carpet looking holiday fresh in no time.

The two rotating power brushes tackled the ground in dirt which means I’ll start my year with a clean and fresh home. And waiting for the carpet to dry? No worries. When you use the Express Clean mode, carpets are dry in just one hour. Yep. It’s true. I didn’t have to bring out the fans, open the windows, or keep the cats confined all day in the other room. Dry in an hour you guys!

Do you remember how I mentioned earlier that pet hair is a problem in my house? While cleaning the carpets, cat hair got stuck in the base of the suction area. If you have pets and used a carpet cleaner before, you’ve probably experienced this. Well, BISSELL is obviously in tune with pets and their humans because they included a neat tool that you can use to unclog the tubing and suction area of the cleaner. Yay!

Now that my carpets were clean, the next step was to find a way to corral all the pet toys in my house. I don’t want holiday guests tripping over a furry mouse or ball.

Time to make a cat toy box!

I bought a wooden crate at my local craft store for this project, but you could certainly use scrap wood. I also bought a package of 1-inch doll heads that we’ll be using for as feet.

Remove 4 of the doll heads and insert a nail or screw in the hole at the bottom {it should slide in easily}. This will give you something to hold onto as you paint them.

Once the doll heads are dry, glue them on the bottom of your crate. I used E6000 industrial glue, but a glue gun or super glue will work too. You can measure and mark or eyeball where you want to place the knobs/doll heads/feet.

Now for the fun part. We’re going to make a cat face to place on the side of the crate. Here’s the template that I created and used:

I ended up using pipe cleaner for the whiskers, but I included the whisker shape for you all anyway. Here’s the free download {without the watermark}:

About Kim Dickerson (Winter + Sparrow)

Kim is the founder of Winter + Sparrow (formerly known as Saving More Than Me). She's a writer, creator. and cat herder. She's also a British TV junkie, drinker of all.the.tea., avid book reader, thrift store magnet, and Multiple Sclerosis warrior. She resides in beautiful Richmond, Virginia. P.S. Want to know more? Click here to find out what profession Kim previously worked in and discover what subjects her Master's degrees are in.

Reader Interactions

Comments

Our days of cats might be over but I could totally use that little hand held carpet shampooer for the mystery stains the kids seem to produce! Your orange cat reminds me so much of our “Jinx” what a wonderful surprise to see what looks like a very familiar face 🙂 I’m curious how long the decorations lasted on your cat box. Our cats would have destroyed that in seconds!

Trackbacks

[…] decked out in the logos of their favorite teams while sci-fi fans clutter their desks with toys and figurines. It’s no secret that pop culture fanatics are reliable shoppers. If your enterprise […]